Crail Craighead Links

Crail Golfing Society — one of the oldest golf clubs in the world, founded 1786 — runs two courses at Fife Ness. The Balcomie Links is the original Victorian layout; the Craighead Links is the modern extension, a Graham Marsh design opened in 1998 on land inland from the original course. At 6,700 yards and par 71, Craighead is the longer and more demanding of the two.

Marsh's design uses the undulating ground between the coastal headland and the agricultural hinterland of eastern Fife — less dramatic than Balcomie's clifftop holes, but a more sustained and testing links layout with fewer moments of scenic relief and more sustained strategic thinking required. The prevailing wind from the North Sea is if anything more relevant here than on the shorter course.

Green fee is £55–70 depending on season. The society offers combination tickets for both courses — a Craighead round in the morning and a Balcomie afternoon gives an excellent comparison between a Victorian original and a late-twentieth-century interpretation of the same coastline. Most visitors who come to Crail for the Balcomie leave with plans to return for the Craighead.

The village of Crail itself is one of the most attractive on the East Neuk of Fife — a working harbour, a collection of seventeenth-century vernacular stone houses, and the Crail Pottery in the main street. For visitors based in the East Neuk rather than St Andrews, Crail makes a better base: quieter, cheaper, and within 20 minutes of both Elie and Lundin Links.